


Lady Petra Visits Corsica

by Eigon



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: F/M, corsica, holiday romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:01:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26139310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eigon/pseuds/Eigon
Summary: At the end of Whose Body?, Lord Peter and Bunter go on holiday to Corsica to recuperate.Lady Petra and Myrtle Bunter do the same, and Bunter enjoys a holiday romance.
Relationships: Lady Petra Wimsey & Myrtle Bunter, Myrtle Bunter/original character
Kudos: 4





	Lady Petra Visits Corsica

Myrtle Bunter still couldn't quite believe that they had taken such a small amount of luggage with them. Everything they had brought on holiday fitted into two medium sized rucksacks – apart from the camera equipment that she had decided was essential. Even so, it was all remarkably easy to carry.  
"Where we're going, there'll be no need to dress for dinner," Lady Petra said. She was still noticably pale and fragile, to Bunter's experienced eye, but a casual observer would not notice that, and she was making a concerted effort to remain cheerful.  
"We're not staying in Ajaccio, then, my lady?" Bunter asked, stumbling slightly over the pronunciation of the name of Corsica's capital city. "I had heard that the Maison Bonaparte was worth visiting."  
"Bother Bonaparte, and bother his Maison," Lady Petra retorted. "No, we're heading for the hills. I don't want to see any civilisation for a while."  
It seemed to Bunter that she didn't want to do anything in the way that one might expect of a Duke's sister, though she kept her thoughts to herself as a good servant should. She didn't even complain when Lady Petra hitched a ride for them in the back of a filthy farm truck that was heading out of town. Lady Petra was in one of her moods where she grinned joyfully and quoted poetry at every opportunity – which was a good sign. It reminded Bunter of their time in France before the accident that had resulted in Lady Petra being invalided home.  
After a couple of hours of rattling along atrocious roads, some of them with worrisome drops on one side or the other, the truck pulled up in the square of a small village, outside a roughly whitewashed house which appeared to be some sort of inn.  
Lady Petra jumped down from the back of the truck, pronounced the village perfect for her requirements, and the truck rattled away, even further into the hills, leaving the two women and their luggage in the middle of the village square, between the inn and the church with its tall tower, being watched curiously by three small children with runny noses and bare feet, and several chickens.  
The inn had no other guests, and it immediately became their base of operations. Bunter was pleased, though somewhat surprised, to find that the beds were reasonably clean, and the food was hearty peasant fare, which they needed after long days tramping the nearby hills. They even saw a bearded vulture once, though Bunter wasn't fast enough to get the camera into focus for a photograph.

At the inn, in the evenings, they sat with glasses of local red wine and listened to the locals speak their mixture of native Corsican and French.  
Bunter couldn't help noticing the son of the landlord, and he had certainly noticed her. Andria was a handsome young man with a mane of black hair and dark brown eyes. He habitually wore a red silk sash with a knife tucked into it, and high black boots, and a very white shirt. He paid far more attention to her requirements than he did to Lady Petra's, being quick to bring extra bread when she asked for it at meals, or another bottle of wine; "the best in the house for the English miladies!" He spoke good French – he explained that he had been conscripted into the French army during the War, so it was easy for Bunter to talk to him. Her French was also very good.  
Petra watched the courtship unfold with good humour. "My looks aren't to the local taste around here," she said, one morning as they walked out. "Hair like straw, silly face – oh, come along, my Myrtle-bush, you know it's true! And they don't really believe all the 'English milady' stuff. They think I'm only pretending to be the daughter of a Duke. Whereas you, with your English rose complection, exactly fit their preconceptions of what an English lady should look like. I think young Andria can see you running the inn with him in years to come, you know."  
"This is all very well for a holiday, my lady," Bunter said, "but I wouldn't want to live here."  
She did pause to wonder if Lady Petra had heard floorboards creak as Andria had made his way to her room in the night – but that was private business. She was a sensible person, and she had been a nurse, so she had taken the appropriate precautions.

Lady Petra had other interests to occupy her. She had discovered that a regular visitor to the bar of the inn had sworn vendetta against members of another local family, and had sworn not to cut his hair or his beard until he was avenged. His hair fell in greying locks halfway down his back, and his beard reached halfway down his chest, so it seemed that vengeance had not been a swift affair thus far. She was uncertain about the inciting incident of the vendetta and, as a stranger who sought only to satisfy her own curiosity, her questioning of the local people who seemed to be involved in the vendetta was carefully casual – she was anxious to remain an onlooker rather than a participant.   
"It's jolly refreshing," she said one day to Bunter. They had climbed to a meadow above the village where Bunter could get good panoramic views of the surrounding mountains for her photography. "Here murder is a kind of ritual, with rules of honour, not like the sordid murders you get back home, where some miscreant knocks a poor soul over the head for their inheritance, or out of jealousy in love or something."  
Bunter paused in the action of setting up the composition of her next photograph. She hoped that Lady Petra's train of thought wouldn't lead her back to musing on the sad case of Sir Reuben Levy.  
"I'm a bit hazy about the details of this particular case," Lady Petra went on, "but it seems to have started with an argument at a funeral – and they seem to carry grudges forever, almost as if they enjoy it." She grinned lazily. "I daresay it gives them something to take an interest in. If they had daily newspapers, now – or even weekly ones – or some enterprising soul came up here with a film projector and a selection of Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd films, they'd forget about that goat that strayed into the wrong pasture, or the outrageous insult at the funeral."  
The interest Lady Petra was taking in the affairs of the villagers made Bunter think that their holiday might be drawing to a natural close. Soon Lady Petra would want to get back to her rare books and her piano, and civilised plumbing. But that was all right. Andria was dashing, and attentive, and had prospects (he would inherit the inn eventually, after all), and his nocturnal visits to her room were certainly very enjoyable – but somehow, she couldn't quite see him as a marriagable prospect. She too craved the comforts of modern living, and though her French was good, she did not want to spend the rest of her life speaking it.  
Besides, what would Lady Petra do without her?


End file.
